Worries About the Olympics
James Fallows has written a must-read post summarizing his thinking about the upcoming Beijing Olympics.
While he worries about air quality and major infrastructure projects that are not yet completed, he points to other issues we should all consider:
Rather I’m puzzled by a series of deliberate and inadvertent decisions that, if you didn’t know better, you might think were designed to turn the whole spectacle into a source of friction rather than pride for China. None of these steps is news on its own. Collectively the pattern is discouraging, and puzzling too.Fallows is correct. If the Chinese government wants a successful Olympics (and Fallows argues it is in the world's interest that these games come off well), then how does one explain the visa restrictions, crackdown against foreign journalists, among other issues?
This is another important way to look at the upcoming Olympics. You may wish that politics and other events would not intrude into our sports, but they do -- and we need to keep that fact in mind.